looking to engage a pilot to fly to Nantucket

It sounds to me like all of these technicalities upon other technicalities upon other possible technicalities and regulations is partly why GA suffers.
 
Ron Levy said:
On the day he wants to go, and to wait four hours for him, and to head back when the passenger is ready to go? Sorry -- too many ducks quacking.
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I understood his request to be some day in September, not a specific day in September.

I was thinking along the lines of "Hey, I'm going there on September 15. I'm leaving at 7am, will arrive around 9, and I'm coming back around 3. If that works for you, let me know."
 
LJS1993 said:
It sounds to me like all of these technicalities upon other technicalities upon other possible technicalities and regulations is partly why GA suffers.
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The reason we have all those rules is that pilots have tried to do what the FAA (and, indirectly, Congress) clearly intended them not to do, and the FAA is always having to write more and stricter regulations to make it specifically illegal for the next person to do the same. If folks with PP's would stop trying to find sneaky ways to get paid by others for flying them around (which I have to say seems obvious to me as something that PP's are just not supposed to be doing), we wouldn't have all these rules and interpretations, and we wouldn't have to go through all this discussion. Remember -- Part 135 exists primarily because of Roger Peterson and his flight of The Day the Music Died.
 
Steve Foley said:
I understood his request to be some day in September, not a specific day in September.
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Good luck selling that to the Regional Counsel. Read all the cases and interpretations the FAA has put out, and it becomes pretty obvious that this is the sort of thing the FAA doesn't want done outside a Part 135 certificate operation.

Of course, you could always wave the PBOR and claim the FAA's interpretations are unreasonable. Again, good luck, and I hope you have a pile of money to pay the lawyers to carry that fight to the courts.
 
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weilke said:
* with a valid 2nd class medical
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Would a 3rd class medical not be sufficient for the instructor, considering flight instruction is not a commercial activity?

I agree though, that is the easiest solution, in the event that you'd like to actively fly. Sitting in the back while the CFI flies the plane won't cut it though.
 
Brad Z said:
Would a 3rd class medical not be sufficient for the instructor, considering flight instruction is not a commercial activity?
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It's probably moot, as no FBO is going to rent a plane to a pilot who hasn't flown in years with the renter hiring a flight instructor from a competing FBO/school to act as PIC. But if they did, the question would be whether the CFI is along as an instructor or as a hired pilot. If the latter, then it would require a Second Class medical. The question to be answered regarding the former would be whether the case could be made that this was a bona fide instructional flight, and that might be tricky to show given the OP's stated lack of intent to start flying again.

There is also the problem of the renting FBO's insurance, which probably prohibits instructors other than those on the FBO's staff. So, if the renter tells the FBO he's hiring an outside pilot, then has the outsider act as an instructor, there will be trouble.
 
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Brad Z said:
Would a 3rd class medical not be sufficient for the instructor, considering flight instruction is not a commercial activity?
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Instructing is not commercial, sitting on your hands for pay to fulfill an insurance or compliance requirement is.

Calling it instruction in the out+back scenario would imnho be a bit of a stretch, not that it hasn't been done before, usually for instrument training.

I know of at least three FBOs that only have aircraft and no staff CFIs or pilots. They will gladly rent a plane to a non-pilot if he brings a suitably qualified pilot. They care about two things: that the credit card authorizes and that the pilot fulfills insurance requirements.
 
Ron Levy said:
The reason we have all those rules is that pilots have tried to do what the FAA (and, indirectly, Congress) clearly intended them not to do, and the FAA is always having to write more and stricter regulations to make it specifically illegal for the next person to do the same. If folks with PP's would stop trying to find sneaky ways to get paid by others for flying them around (which I have to say seems obvious to me as something that PP's are just not supposed to be doing), we wouldn't have all these rules and interpretations, and we wouldn't have to go through all this discussion. Remember -- Part 135 exists primarily because of Roger Peterson and his flight of The Day the Music Died.
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And Ron loves regulations. Most of the heinous things that have hurt GA in the last couple of decades weren't new regs, they were BS opinions by the Chief Counsel's office.

With no regulation creating a way to watchdog the Chief Counsel's office, they get to re-write the regs in whatever way they please, even if that wasn't the original intent of the reg per the people who wrote it originally.

They aren't aviation professionals. They should have to go back to the original office that wrote the reg, fully understand what the reg was intended to do, and then make recommendations for re-writes to match. Not be allowed to make stuff up.
 
LJS1993 said:
It sounds to me like all of these technicalities upon other technicalities upon other possible technicalities and regulations is partly why GA suffers.
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But this situation has nothing to do with GA. Other than an appropriate aircraft would be a small GA-type.
 
Ron Levy said:
The reason we have all those rules is that pilots have tried to do what the FAA (and, indirectly, Congress) clearly intended them not to do, and the FAA is always having to write more and stricter regulations to make it specifically illegal for the next person to do the same. If folks with PP's would stop trying to find sneaky ways to get paid by others for flying them around (which I have to say seems obvious to me as something that PP's are just not supposed to be doing), we wouldn't have all these rules and interpretations, and we wouldn't have to go through all this discussion. Remember -- Part 135 exists primarily because of Roger Peterson and his flight of The Day the Music Died.
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Fascinating. I just looked up and read the report of Roger Peterson's doomed flight. It seems he had a commercial pilot license, but no instrument, and the report I read said that he was not certified for night flight. :idea:
That last part makes me wonder, has private since had night flight added to it, and there were separate night flight certificates back then, or is this article mistaken (which wouldn't surprise me, either).

Also, from what I find, he was flying for an FBO, though it didn't specifically say that it was a charter service, it did say that they chartered the flight. So I'm guessing that since you said 135 is in part due to this flight, there were no regulations (or obviously far fewer regulations) that separated uses for planes, like separating charter from instruction for instance?

I also found it pretty interesting, in a morbid way (I did used to be a paramedic, after all) to read Buddy Holly's death certificate, specifically noting that the coroner seems to have taken his fee from cash found on the body. Now that sounds weird....
 
Ron Levy said:
No, I do not, but I do enjoy teaching pilots how to avoid getting in trouble with the FAA, and understanding the rules and how the FAA applies them is part of that.
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I was just yanking your chain. I forgot the ;)
 
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